Sports Festivals!
Life at school throughout the month of September was dominated by preparations for the sports festival. From the moment the students returned from summer vacation they were off and running--choosing their captains, organizing relay teams, practicing team events (like 20 person jump rope), planning with the festival-committee they've been assigned to, choosing music, making pom poms, banners and signs.Last year the school was split into 3 evenly mixed teams of first, second and third grade students, but this year each homeroom stood as it's own team (1 first, 2 second and 2 third grade) and competed against the rest of the school.
I was doubtful that this method would work... how can scrawny first graders compete with third graders who stand at least a foot taller? In the end, there was a lot more competition than I'd expected and my team, class 2-1, ended up coming in 2nd place (!) pushing one of the third grade teams to 4th.
We had perfect weather and because I know the students much better than I did a year ago, it was easy for me to mix in with them to talk and cheer... I would much rather be "one of the students" than "one of the teachers" during school events.
some of the girls from class 2-1 (our team color was yellow)
the blue team is class 3-2, the eventual winners of this year's sports festival
third year (9th grade) boys
my team, class 2-1!I was also invited to return to my old school for their sports day the following week. It was great to see those students again (I even visited with the kindergarteners!) and fun to spend a day hanging around Hirosawa-chu for the first time in months.
The events chosen by each school tend to vary a bit, so even though each sports festival fits into a similar mold, the experience can be completely different. There was very little overlap between Minami and Hirosawa's festivals, but my camera battery died much earlier in the day than I expected. I did manage to take some video of a crazy capture-the-flag-esque competition before that though, and I hope you can see it:posted by Kris at
10:08 AM
1 Comments:
Hey Kristine. Long time no talk or see. I've been reading your blog and it truely changes my mind about going to Japan. My boyfriend and I are starting to think about and plan many trips. He been all over south east asia and hope to start doing more traveling very soon. We have put Japan on the top of the list. It looks like you have done some amazing, fun things. I'm not sure your email, but mine is brittonkane@gmail.com. Maybe we could talk about places to go and stay and just about your stay in Japan. Hope all is well. Hope to talk to you soon and maybe see you sooner than later. Britton
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Unknown, at 10/12/2006 11:02 PM
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